Sleeping Under the Citgo Sign

We're visiting Catherine, Jamie, and Luke.

Last night we stopped off in Arlington Center to get some Thai food from Sweet Chili (of course), and pizza from Papa Ginos. The plan was to get pizza from "Za" which turned out to be in East Arlington. A bit of confusion there.

We made it to Waltham, then spent some time oohing and ahhing at Luke.


Catherine and Jamie had a delicious cake for Tina. Um, yeah, I didn't get a picture until after we had started eating it.


Catherine made Tina a beautiful necklace. This was one that Tina had admired before.


We headed to the hotel and almost made it without any problems. We were literally across the street and just had to make a U-turn past the bus station and we would have been done. But we could not move. For what seemed like forever nothing moved. Finally, a prisoner transport vehicle to the left of us put on its lights, traffic parted a little bit, and we followed in their wake. Too bad they weren't going in our direction, but we finally managed to turn around and get back to the hotel.

Anna likes the free cookies.


Here's the view outside our window.


The next day (that would be today), after a hearty breakfast at the hotel, Tina set off to Beth Israel to do some real work, and Anna and I went to visit and "help" Catherine and Jamie. We were going to be way too early, so first we stopped off in Arlington Center for some coffee (just for me!) and a visit to Spy Pond. Anna was pretty excited to see the ducks. We came here every day when she was a baby.



We got to Waltham just in time to see Luke get a sponge bath. Jamie headed to work, and the rest of us had pizza while Luke slept peacefully in his stroller. I tried to help out a little bit, but really, Catherine had things under control. Anna and I picked up a hefty stack of pictures from Luke's first week. I helped Catherine with birth announcements while Anna drew some pictures. And then we had to head back to the hotel to meet Tina for dinner.

It took forever to get back to the hotel. Part of it was just unavoidable traffic. But a big part of it was that I was determined not to get stuck in that ridiculous traffic in Kenmore Square. I should have just headed down Comm. Ave., maybe crossing at the B.U. Bridge. What I did instead was go through the Fenway, making a big circle around the hotel. Each time I tried to avoid traffic I would get stuck in more traffic. When we finally got to the hotel, Tina was resting after a busy day at BIDMC and a conference at the Seaport Hotel. She was pretty hungry too, so it was a good thing Catherine had given us some cake to bring to Tina. Unfortunately, we didn't have utensils, but that's what fingers are for! We tracked down some more food at India Quality and 7-Eleven (for Anna), and finally went to bed.

The Upstairs Hallway

I put down the first coat of polyurethane in the upstairs hallway.


It's hard to tell from this photo, but I think it turned out pretty good, considering how bad it was when I started. (I can't believe I don't have a "before" picture.)

Oh, why is the above photo cropped so funny? Well, let's just say I wanted to draw your attention away from some of the unfinished projects in the hallway.


That's an access panel for the bathtub plumbing. It would take at most one day to make a less noticeable access panel, but after exactly four years living in this house I still haven't gotten around to it.

Yup, that's the original wallpaper that covered the upstairs hallway, stairwell, and entry.

The Evolution of a Kitchen

The original plaster ceiling was crumbling and the lath was moldy. (The kitchen is under the bathroom.)



Removing the lath revealed... almost nothing keeping the bathroom from falling into the kitchen! (If anything, the floor was probably holding up some of those joists.)



A bit of lumber, lots of bolts, and even more coffee. (Thanks Dad!)



I can finally see the light in the kitchen! And how about that ceiling? Easy access to the mess of plumbing and wiring that still needs to be sorted out, plus stylish special order tiles!



Let's just not look at the rest of the kitchen yet.

First and Last Books in the Library

For no reason at all I decided to check out the first and last books in the library (shelved according to the Dewey Decimal system)

I found the first book shelved at 002 Lan - Outwitting History: The Amazing Adventures of A Man Who Rescued A Million Yiddish Books by Aaron Lansky. This book seems to be a well-told tale of person who decided to save Yiddish books that were being discarded from various collections. I can almost see myself doing this. Well, maybe not rescuing Yiddish books specifically, but you get the idea.

The last book was shelved at 999 Sha - South: A Memoir of the Endurance Voyage by Ernest Shackleton. This book is on a subject that interests me, and it is written by the man himself. The text does seems to be a bit more difficult to read than modern accounts.

Unfortunately, this book seems to be improperly cataloged. 999 is the DDC number for "Extraterrestrial worlds". Most libraries choose either 998 Arctic islands & Antarctica, or 919 Geography of & travel in other areas, although SCPL is not the only library that classifies Antarctica as an extraterrestrial world.

So, does this book really qualify as the last book in the library? Does anybody care?

Random aside: Schenectady County is home to the 109th Airlift Wing of the Air National Guard. They provide airlift support for Arctic and Antarctic missions using a ski-equipped version of the C-130.

Musical Rooms

We're getting ready for the arrival of our newest family member. One thing that traditionally needs to be done is preparation of the nursery. We already have a crib (thanks Cate!) and all the furniture we need, so it should be a simple matter of putting the furniture in the room. There are, however, a few preliminaries.

With the addition of another girl we will need one bedroom for each of the two girls, plus one bedroom for me and Tina, plus an office for Tina. We have four bedrooms in the house, but we've only fixed up three of them. Well, that needs to change.

(I like to refer to the bedrooms by their geographic location. This drives Tina crazy for some reason, but it is the only way I can keep track of them.)

Here's the scenario:

• NW bedroom = office --> nursery
  
• NE bedroom = Tina and Mike --> office
• SE bedroom = unoccupied --> Tina and Mike
• SW bedroom = Anna --> Anna

So every room changes, except for Anna's room. But wait, there's more!

Anna wants her room painted lilac. (Actually, she wanted it painted pink, but we talked her into lilac.) Once we get all the other rooms set up, it will be hard to get Anna out of her room to paint it, so it has to be done now. (We could also ignore her request, but come on, it's pretty reasonable for a little princess to want her room painted some sort of pinkish, purple color.)

So we moved Anna's furniture to the NW bedroom (current office, future nursery) while I paint the SW bedroom (Anna's past and future bedroom). Of course, the NW bedroom wasn't empty, so all that stuff had to go somewhere. Thank goodness for old houses with large walk-up attics. And Dad helped me bring my oak table down to the basement. But wait, there's more!

The upstairs hallway is in terrible shape. The floor should really be replaced, but we're not going to do that, so I just have to fix it up as best as I can. The thing is, once I put down a coat of polyurethane we can't access any of the upstairs rooms at all, and with the humidity we've been having it takes 2-3 days to cure. And it really stinks too. Good thing my sister just had a baby so I have an excuse to go to Boston for a couple of days.

Hey, this post could use some pictures, huh? I'll have to see what I can do about that. Maybe tomorrow. Firefly is waiting - Bushwhacked!

One post per day

One post per day.

Made it with 2 minutes to spare.

And now off to bed.

(There's a very good chance that this post will be edited sometime in the future. I'm not one of those purist bloggers who think you can't ever change anything after posting.)

Malcolm would have been a good name

I just rewatched the intended pilot episode of Firefly. (This episode was actually broadcast last because the brilliant executives at FOX decided that the best time to show an episode introducing the characters, setting, and overall story arc would be at the end of the series. But I digress.)

Even though I should have been exactly the intended audience for this show, I didn't get to see it until Catherine and Jamie gave me a DVD of the complete series for Christmas. I mentioned that they had a baby yesterday, named Lucas Orlando Milliken.

That's a good name. A fine name. But Malcolm would have been a good name too, don't you think?